Influence of high magnetic fields on superconducting transition of one-dimensional Nb and MoGe nanowires
arXiv:cond-mat/0411749 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.017004
Abstract
The effects of strong magnetic field on superconducting Nb and MoGe nanowires with diameter $\sim10$ nm have been studied. We have found that the Langer-Ambegaokar-McCumber-Halperin (LAMH) theory of thermally activated phase slips is applicable in a wide range of magnetic fields and describes well the temperature dependence of the wire resistance, over eleven orders of magnitude. The field dependence of the critical temperature, $T_{c}$, extracted from the LAMH fits is in good quantitative agreement with the theory of pair-breaking perturbations that takes into account both spin and orbital contributions. The extracted spin-orbit scattering time agrees with an estimate $Ï_{so}\simeq Ï(\hbar c/ Ze^{2})^{4}$, where $Ï$ is the elastic scattering time and $Z$ is the atomic number.
accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters